Opinion: Clinton learns a lesson from California’s governator

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Back in the early ‘90s as first lady, Hillary Clinton’s first steps into the political swamp that is the American healthcare system proved rocky and, in the end, doomed. As she often notes on the campaign trail these days, ‘I have the scars to prove it.’

One of the lessons she learned from that controversial experience that nearly derailed her husband’s presidency was to keep any new plan simple.

Today, when she announced her presidential campaign’s new universal healthcare plan in Iowa, she was much more aware of marketing its positive sides. Among the first words out of her mouth were, ‘This is not government-run.’

But also, as The Times’ Peter Nicholas points out, it appears the New York senator has been paying close attention to California’s Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Democratic presidential front-runner made use of one of Schwarzenegger’s main talking points in selling his own plan to revamp California’s healthcare system.

Like Schwarzenegger, Clinton mentioned the ‘hidden taxes’ present in the existing healthcare system. That is when, for example, uninsured people go to the emergency room for treatment. They can’t be turned away but also can’t pay for that expensive treatment, so the charges are divvied up and included in charges assessed on others who can.

Schwarzenegger invoked the hidden taxes argument to make his proposed healthcare fees look more appealing -- or less unappealing. Clinton says her $110-billion plan would be financed through that old political favorite, cost savings, and by rolling back President Bush’s tax cuts for people earning more than $250,000.

But her reference to hidden taxes suggests she and her political advisors like Schwarzenegger’s savvy marketing methods. Never mind his different party. At a briefing later for reporters, a Clinton campaign aide, Gene Sperling, repeated the hidden taxes line. Mentioning Schwarzenegger, Sperling said the Clinton plan would ‘reduce some of the hidden taxes.’

But now they’re not hidden anymore.

--Andrew Malcolm